music roundup: june 2025
Jun. 30th, 2025 11:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pantoneoceananother month... another month of music!
this month i did something a bit different where i write out my thoughts to new albums as i listen to them instead of just like... ya know... procrastinating and then writing fuckall down on the spot.
just a bit of a heads-up for the two people that read this; i am currently doing a study abroad program in vienna as i am writing this! what! this is going to go on until the very end of july and as such i probably won't be posting a music roundup in july for the fact that i am very busy and will not have too much time to listen to new music. or maybe not? we'll see. i hope i'm able to but you know how it is :]
(emmanuelle parrenin was in third with 217 plays, but i only listened to her album maison rose which i've already covered last month-- i won't have anything new to say!)
i think it's fairly obvious to say that the surge (heh) from the beach boys came in remembrance for brian wilson. i touched upon this in my last post quite heavily but i don't think it's an overstatement to call him the mozart of his time. pet sounds has all but cemented itself in my pantheon of sacred cow albums. there's really nothing else to say; he will be missed.
natural snow buildings is a bit of a weird one as their stuff is less song-based (though, there are still songs that stand out-- more on that later) and it's more about the droning, mesmerizing aspect to them. they make me feel as if i'm just a little bit too far in the forest, and everywhere i go seems to make all the trees darker and thicker, and i can hear the little forest spirits whispering at me and chanting their spells. and i think that honestly sums up the album the dance of the moon and sun as well
björk... bjonk... for the longest time i had a strange relationship with her music where i can objectively analyze that it is well-produced and "good" but didn't really click with me. i liked "it's oh so quiet" off of post for a time, but other than that, i didn't really pay her music much mind. in fact i think i got more amusement from seeing the shit she got up to, like knocking out a reporter or (this part isn't amusement) having a deranged fan try to kill her??? wtf?? weird shit. the internet's only made that type of behavior exceedingly more common sadly. in any case that isn't what defines her-- what does is her music. and debut is damn good. more on that later
(as stated above-- i skipped maison rose with 217 plays so i wouldn't be repeating myself)
as far as pet sounds goes... what is there to say? it's one of the best albums of the 60s. better than anything the beatles did, at least. it so perfectly captures all the wrinkles and detail of emotion that people still love and cherish this album so many decades later. everyone knows the likes of "god only knows" and "wouldn't it be nice" but lately i've really liked "don't talk (put your head on my shoulder)". there's a video floating around where brian records-- what sounds like on the spot, mind you-- a vocal overdub for the song that spans 8 different takes-- that's 8 different vocalizations. and it went UNUSED!!! the guy was a wizard perfectionist in the studio. overpowered, dare i say. there's so much about this album to say that i don't really know what to say, but; it's one of the most emotive albums of all time, still, after all this time. beautiful stuff
debut can get really fucking weird but in a very harmonious way. all the disconnected parts fit together nicely and create a beautifully weird little structure like a jenga tower missing half of its parts. "venus as a boy" is, without the NSFW parts, what i'm trying to be; i like beauty! i have a gentle temperament! goals, so to speak. and then the cover of "like someone in love" takes one of my personal favorite jazz standards and puts a very interesting spin on it... moter frucking harp!!! let's go! and, this applies to pretty much all of the songs, but especially in a live setting it really strikes me how talented of a vocalist björk is to be able to sing in such an eccentric yet beautiful manner (see analogy at start of paragraph). combine all of this art pop-y stuff with its being in debt to really chilled out house music and that makes it a very enjoyable and singular listen
"please let me wonder" and "i felt your shape" are two sides of the same coin-- unstable attachments to another person. "please let me wonder" acts as a before-- the narrator having a crush on someone else and trying desperately to make his dreams a reality, in spite of his bumbling and nervous nature and having words caught in his throat. i go a little bit more in depth in my previous post; in any case, the after is represented in "i felt your shape" and really that's something you could say for all of the glow, pt. 2. there's a somewhat graceful dichotomy between those two songs being right next to each other, in those hopeful and nervous daydreams turned into yearning agony and realizing that only themselves are to blame for what went wrong
the main interpretation of the song is that he never felt the sheer size and power of the emotions of his ex, and romanticized her into being someone else entirely. this is alluded to in the earlier song "my roots are strong and deep" so i feel it holds weight, but in my times listening to this i imagine him physically trying to hold on to what the narrator sees as a vision of this ex and physically trying to grab onto it-- with the following epiphany resulting from it
before anything else-- that last line is one of the more heartbreaking ones i've heard in how it's built up to and delivered. the narrator reminisces on their past together and realizes now the sheer depth of the other person, and how they never understood their plight (gusty blow, lava flow, etc. all indicate turmoil of some kind) until it was too late. his arms are limp and all that left is a memory and thoughts of what could have been done right. and i'm right there with him
nothing these damn trembling hands can do other than think of what went wrong
this got into the top three songs of the month since it's short, and simple on the surface, while also being relatable enough to want to have it on during real rotting hours, but looking deeper the songwriting is so incredibly intricate. not a wasted word
i'm at the point where i'm considering just pasting the whole song's lyrics but it'd do better to just listen to it on your own if you haven't; hell, the whole album. it's a very good album for dealing with grief. or making it worse?
"rain serenade" is a pretty apt title for the song-- it's an instrumental folk piece with a repeating fingerpicked guitar riff as vocalizations, more guitar, an accordion, various field recordings of what sounds like a forest add themselves slowly in. that's what i mean by this band being very trance-inducing-- they put you immediately into a certain environment and lull you into it as if you're in some fantastical wilderness. i can feel the rain pouring on my head and i can see the mushrooms jumping about
i feel like the longer this series goes on the more i have to write. that's probably a good thing but god damn this is a lot of work to type out, i've been here for two hours already. so much for studying :D
a year in your garden by column is warbly, nostalgic electronica that's underpinned by the fact that this is a tribute album for the creator's brother who died nearly exactly a year before the album came out. out of respect i don't really want to say anything else. i hope he's found his peace
i listened to eating the sea by soul whirling somewhere during a period of intense rotting and i can appreciate that it sounded like what i was feeling-- very sullen and melancholic gothic-inspired vocals drift around washed out rooms of galactic ambiance. an album for when you feel like all the good progress you made is becoming undone and you're a nervous wreck over initiating a text or completing a form and you feel all the headlights are shining directly at you. an album for when you are aware that you are in someone else's dream
i liken this to if brian eno's early career turn straight into ambient music saw him keep some of his eye for forward-thinking pop music in the albums he would create. i do not recall his 2022 album FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE all that well, but i recall the general atmosphere being similar yet a lot gloomier; eating the sea is something that could have been made some 30 years earlier if he were to follow the same formula then
the record label this is on-- projekt-- seems to specialize in this type of music (see also: flux by love spirals downwards, xuvetyn by loveliescrushing) and i'm using this as an explicit note to myself to browse more of what they have. yippie!
colour green by sibylle baier is an album out of time-- the album comes from personal recordings made in the 70s and was never released until they were discovered via baier's son in the early 2000s. the lyrics talk of everyday life, like seeing a cat on someone's lap or buying food, but also take a turn to the dark and introspective with what seems to be PTSD in "i lost something in the hills", or a breakup in "the end". simple, everyday life made still interesting to listen to. not a lot of people can do that
the album shimmering, warm, and bright by the band bel canto is... frustrating. the track "unicorn" is ASTOUNDING... a backing rhythm derived from ambient house moves the song from quaint to completely driven and pouinding, as vocalist anneli drecker longingly poeticizes in a quasi-medieval manner. this is only highlighted by what i believe to be a 12-string guitar that sounds strikingly similar to a clavichord. think: everything but the girl meets cocteau twins within the pages of a fairy tale unfurling in a nightclub. incredible song! (the band's name, incidentally, is italian for "beautiful singing"-- rather apt, i feel)
though, there is something to be said of setting too high of a bar; none of the album reaches these heights again and indeed is rather mediocre as a whole. i dislike a lot of the melodic or compositional choices ("spiderdust" stands out as a song ruined by a rather annoying chorus melodically; or, "waking will" only really picking up in the last 20 seconds of a 5 minute song) and with only a few adjustments this could be a great album! instead of merely acceptable. still, if nothing else, the first three tracks made it worth the time for me! but it could be so, so much better at the same time.
sunflower by the beach boys is a bit of a fucked up pick as i have, indeed, known and listened to this album for a while... so i can't say i discovered. no, i- look. i know that's punishable by death, but please. PLEASE hear me out. i've never truly given it a full listen. instead i picked out some tracks i liked a couple years ago and discarded about 2/3rds of the rest of it if i wasn't immediately liking it within first listening. you get that, right? don't leave! look... as part of my fixation on the beach boys this month i gave it another listen. and i have a lot to say on the album!
"add some music to your day" is the first song that really struck with me only on a relisten. it's naive in its lyrics in its lyrics but this works to effect-- little everyday moments of finding music throughout the day. like:
it's just a good sentiment, yanno? music is awesome and it's all around you! (doesn't have to be recorded music either-- listen for the birds singing or the rain tapping against your roof, or even the rhythmic sound of walking on leaves)
i found myself being somewhat perturbed by "got to know the woman". i've noticed, within some recordings in the early 1970s, there's something of a nostalgia present for the 50s whether it be in its lyrics or in the music-- in this case the beach boys go back to their roots with a sound not too dissimilar from chuck berry or perhaps something closer to motown? i've never really been a fan of 50s rock music so i might be somewhat of a biased juror but i can't get into this one. it's a dennis song, and while he can pen some very pretty words at times (even on this album), this is one of the several times his contribution can be boiled down to "Girl I Want To [REDACTED] You So Badly". there's a quote from the artist white town i heard in a todd in the shadows video about the one-hit wonder "your woman" that, to my recollection, goes something like "male songwriting is either about effervescently twee songwriting about a girl in fucking flowerly fields and how i'll never leave you forever or 'she done me wrong man, she's a BItch Whore'" and i feel like while this song leans more towards the latter in its aggressive nature, there's definitely room to be made for a third category that's just "SEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Girl I Want To [REDACTED] You So Badly)". i dunno. i'm just not that into it. though at least dennis didn't record himself fucking someone in the studio on this one, which also happened
"deirdre" is breezy and a very sweet song. it's hard to go wrong with flutes and chimes to make a song feel like that :]! that sound in combination of a love again makes me feel as if i'm drifting through the clouds just as the sun begins to turn the sky a brilliant orange. bruce johnston really, really shines on this song-- schmaltzy, maybe, but he's damn good at schmaltzy stuff. see also "disney girls 1957" off of surf's up
i was looking at an old beach boys forum, on a thread about a decade old, trying to find out what was up with the beginning harmony (i was interested in the effect-- apparently it's a home recording spliced into the song, maybe some tape warble in there) and the forum OP says that it was his favorite off of the album and instead of answering the question he had (same as mine-- beginning harmony effects) two people respond in a passive-aggressive manner on how it's actually not that great and it's not the best on the album. saw some similar stuff about nick drake being too mopey or whatever on a crusty and ancient forum as well (like... it was on the mudcat cafe. look at the layout of that shit. what the fuck). hopefully someday people can move past stuff like that
i earlier mentioned my disdain for the unnervingly horny output of dennis, but "forever" is what i consider to be his pinnacle of songwriting and one of the beach boys' best songs as a whole. i recall listening to this on loop in high school, several years ago, during the 1 hour break period they provided us to get homework done; it was in this very large addition to the old cafeteria, where all the tables were large and circular and the floors had a weird tile pattern where it was white but marbled in a way that it always looked dirty. i always sat alone; everyone did. it gave me lots of time to read the fire emblem 4 manga, or read and reread harlan ellison's essay about mailing a dead possum (if i recall) to someone that wouldn't give him the rights to something (if i recall), browse tvtropes, and listen to stuff all the while i did that. listening to this song, i had the thought: "i want to record this song for someone!" to me, it is the purest form of an undying declaration of love in songwriting; all they want is for the other person to be happy and they would do anything to do that. the memory faded with time, buried under general cynicism, and is only really coming back now; i hope someday i'm able to make this silly dream of mine a reality :]
the beach boys are very very good at this sappy, syrup-drenched type of ballad especially around this time period. it's just a good a song. and overall i'm glad i gave sunflower a fair shake!
night lights (by gerry mulligan... well, it's in the name, isn't it? music for the nighttime! i listened to the version on spotify which is in stereo as opposed to mono; the quality suffers due to this and i would recommend trying to find a version that's not in stereo to listen to
brief tangent. i generally try to find mono recordings of old jazz types and early 60s pop to listen to as that's most likely what it would have been recorded, mixed, produced, etc. as. panning didn't really become too common until the mid-60s... but even when it did it appeared in only a very rudimentary form to keep things simple-- for mono tracks you can pan them 100 degrees left or 100 degrees right. there's a formula that determines how loud the signal is depending on the panning-- if you have it at 50% left, the audio signal going to the left channel will be 2x louder than the signal going to the right channel. when panning was first being distributed it was only left, center, or right-- as a result a lot of mid-career stuff from the beatles (for example) suffers from this within stereo mixes. it also doesn't help that i'm listening in headphones, but it is what it is!
all that said-- for jazz, i either click with it, or i don't, and i find myself clicking with this a lot-- most of the tracks are instrumentals of ballad-y types which is pretty much all i could ask for when looking something like this... nothing too fast or loud (with the exception of "festival minor", which even then i don't hate). pairs well with the heavy pouring of rain observed from deep within your fireplace. i can't phrase this quite right, but compared to so many other albums like this, instead of merely existing without substance, it soothes you into a painting of an idyllic and completely empty city in the middle of the night. the perfect album cover for an album like this
i downloaded this album and listened to it as i fly away from st. louis, to montreal, and from there to vienna. i'm always going to associate it with that
there's even an interpretation of a piece from frédéric chopin who stands as my favorite classical figure from any period. hell yeah
as i'm writing this i'm listening to a smithsonian folkways album of alpine yodeling and something about it giving me a weird sense of deja-vu. it comes and goes what it actually is but it makes me think of the steep hill where the vineyard is an hour away from home... but not quite. earthier? very grassy. maybe i'm thinking of just an idyllic countryside where i have driven past my fair share of; it's a bit of a confusing feeling but that's also why i search out for stuff like this. the album is mountain songs and yodelling of the alps by fritz liechti and family. it's so homely; he's straight up just singing with his family and having a grand ol' time :]! there's one track where with what i believe is his son-- or someone with a very youthful, boyish voice-- sings lead on a song. it quavers around a lot in a very amateurish yet endearing manner and it's shit like that, intertwined with all of the very call-and-response-esque group vocalizations (thinking "echoyodel" with this one) really hammers in that this is a family recording the songs of their people, and i think that's neat
linked here is this month's full playlist, with every new song that i discovered, for anyone who is interested in the full list!
this month i did something a bit different where i write out my thoughts to new albums as i listen to them instead of just like... ya know... procrastinating and then writing fuckall down on the spot.
just a bit of a heads-up for the two people that read this; i am currently doing a study abroad program in vienna as i am writing this! what! this is going to go on until the very end of july and as such i probably won't be posting a music roundup in july for the fact that i am very busy and will not have too much time to listen to new music. or maybe not? we'll see. i hope i'm able to but you know how it is :]
- artists: the beach boys with 382 plays /// natural snow buildings with 294 plays /// björk (4th) with 143 plays
(emmanuelle parrenin was in third with 217 plays, but i only listened to her album maison rose which i've already covered last month-- i won't have anything new to say!)
i think it's fairly obvious to say that the surge (heh) from the beach boys came in remembrance for brian wilson. i touched upon this in my last post quite heavily but i don't think it's an overstatement to call him the mozart of his time. pet sounds has all but cemented itself in my pantheon of sacred cow albums. there's really nothing else to say; he will be missed.
natural snow buildings is a bit of a weird one as their stuff is less song-based (though, there are still songs that stand out-- more on that later) and it's more about the droning, mesmerizing aspect to them. they make me feel as if i'm just a little bit too far in the forest, and everywhere i go seems to make all the trees darker and thicker, and i can hear the little forest spirits whispering at me and chanting their spells. and i think that honestly sums up the album the dance of the moon and sun as well
björk... bjonk... for the longest time i had a strange relationship with her music where i can objectively analyze that it is well-produced and "good" but didn't really click with me. i liked "it's oh so quiet" off of post for a time, but other than that, i didn't really pay her music much mind. in fact i think i got more amusement from seeing the shit she got up to, like knocking out a reporter or (this part isn't amusement) having a deranged fan try to kill her??? wtf?? weird shit. the internet's only made that type of behavior exceedingly more common sadly. in any case that isn't what defines her-- what does is her music. and debut is damn good. more on that later
- albums: the dance of the moon and sun by natural snow buildings with 294 plays /// pet sounds (3rd) by the beach boys with 148 plays /// debut (4th) by björk with 143 plays
(as stated above-- i skipped maison rose with 217 plays so i wouldn't be repeating myself)
as far as pet sounds goes... what is there to say? it's one of the best albums of the 60s. better than anything the beatles did, at least. it so perfectly captures all the wrinkles and detail of emotion that people still love and cherish this album so many decades later. everyone knows the likes of "god only knows" and "wouldn't it be nice" but lately i've really liked "don't talk (put your head on my shoulder)". there's a video floating around where brian records-- what sounds like on the spot, mind you-- a vocal overdub for the song that spans 8 different takes-- that's 8 different vocalizations. and it went UNUSED!!! the guy was a wizard perfectionist in the studio. overpowered, dare i say. there's so much about this album to say that i don't really know what to say, but; it's one of the most emotive albums of all time, still, after all this time. beautiful stuff
debut can get really fucking weird but in a very harmonious way. all the disconnected parts fit together nicely and create a beautifully weird little structure like a jenga tower missing half of its parts. "venus as a boy" is, without the NSFW parts, what i'm trying to be; i like beauty! i have a gentle temperament! goals, so to speak. and then the cover of "like someone in love" takes one of my personal favorite jazz standards and puts a very interesting spin on it... moter frucking harp!!! let's go! and, this applies to pretty much all of the songs, but especially in a live setting it really strikes me how talented of a vocalist björk is to be able to sing in such an eccentric yet beautiful manner (see analogy at start of paragraph). combine all of this art pop-y stuff with its being in debt to really chilled out house music and that makes it a very enjoyable and singular listen
- tracks: please let me wonder by the beach boys with 116 plays /// i felt your shape by the microphones with 99 plays /// rain serenade by natural snow buildings with 97 plays
"please let me wonder" and "i felt your shape" are two sides of the same coin-- unstable attachments to another person. "please let me wonder" acts as a before-- the narrator having a crush on someone else and trying desperately to make his dreams a reality, in spite of his bumbling and nervous nature and having words caught in his throat. i go a little bit more in depth in my previous post; in any case, the after is represented in "i felt your shape" and really that's something you could say for all of the glow, pt. 2. there's a somewhat graceful dichotomy between those two songs being right next to each other, in those hopeful and nervous daydreams turned into yearning agony and realizing that only themselves are to blame for what went wrong
I thought I felt your shape but I was wrong
Really all I felt was falsely strong
I held on tight and closed my eyes
It was dumb, I had no sense of your size
the main interpretation of the song is that he never felt the sheer size and power of the emotions of his ex, and romanticized her into being someone else entirely. this is alluded to in the earlier song "my roots are strong and deep" so i feel it holds weight, but in my times listening to this i imagine him physically trying to hold on to what the narrator sees as a vision of this ex and physically trying to grab onto it-- with the following epiphany resulting from it
I felt your fall, your winter snows
Your gusty blow, your lava flow
I felt it all, your starry night
Your lack of light
With limp arms I can feel most of you
before anything else-- that last line is one of the more heartbreaking ones i've heard in how it's built up to and delivered. the narrator reminisces on their past together and realizes now the sheer depth of the other person, and how they never understood their plight (gusty blow, lava flow, etc. all indicate turmoil of some kind) until it was too late. his arms are limp and all that left is a memory and thoughts of what could have been done right. and i'm right there with him
nothing these damn trembling hands can do other than think of what went wrong
this got into the top three songs of the month since it's short, and simple on the surface, while also being relatable enough to want to have it on during real rotting hours, but looking deeper the songwriting is so incredibly intricate. not a wasted word
i'm at the point where i'm considering just pasting the whole song's lyrics but it'd do better to just listen to it on your own if you haven't; hell, the whole album. it's a very good album for dealing with grief. or making it worse?
"rain serenade" is a pretty apt title for the song-- it's an instrumental folk piece with a repeating fingerpicked guitar riff as vocalizations, more guitar, an accordion, various field recordings of what sounds like a forest add themselves slowly in. that's what i mean by this band being very trance-inducing-- they put you immediately into a certain environment and lull you into it as if you're in some fantastical wilderness. i can feel the rain pouring on my head and i can see the mushrooms jumping about
i feel like the longer this series goes on the more i have to write. that's probably a good thing but god damn this is a lot of work to type out, i've been here for two hours already. so much for studying :D
i liken this to if brian eno's early career turn straight into ambient music saw him keep some of his eye for forward-thinking pop music in the albums he would create. i do not recall his 2022 album FOREVERANDEVERNOMORE all that well, but i recall the general atmosphere being similar yet a lot gloomier; eating the sea is something that could have been made some 30 years earlier if he were to follow the same formula then
the record label this is on-- projekt-- seems to specialize in this type of music (see also: flux by love spirals downwards, xuvetyn by loveliescrushing) and i'm using this as an explicit note to myself to browse more of what they have. yippie!
though, there is something to be said of setting too high of a bar; none of the album reaches these heights again and indeed is rather mediocre as a whole. i dislike a lot of the melodic or compositional choices ("spiderdust" stands out as a song ruined by a rather annoying chorus melodically; or, "waking will" only really picking up in the last 20 seconds of a 5 minute song) and with only a few adjustments this could be a great album! instead of merely acceptable. still, if nothing else, the first three tracks made it worth the time for me! but it could be so, so much better at the same time.
"add some music to your day" is the first song that really struck with me only on a relisten. it's naive in its lyrics in its lyrics but this works to effect-- little everyday moments of finding music throughout the day. like:
There must be about a million ways
To add some music to your day
it's just a good sentiment, yanno? music is awesome and it's all around you! (doesn't have to be recorded music either-- listen for the birds singing or the rain tapping against your roof, or even the rhythmic sound of walking on leaves)
i found myself being somewhat perturbed by "got to know the woman". i've noticed, within some recordings in the early 1970s, there's something of a nostalgia present for the 50s whether it be in its lyrics or in the music-- in this case the beach boys go back to their roots with a sound not too dissimilar from chuck berry or perhaps something closer to motown? i've never really been a fan of 50s rock music so i might be somewhat of a biased juror but i can't get into this one. it's a dennis song, and while he can pen some very pretty words at times (even on this album), this is one of the several times his contribution can be boiled down to "Girl I Want To [REDACTED] You So Badly". there's a quote from the artist white town i heard in a todd in the shadows video about the one-hit wonder "your woman" that, to my recollection, goes something like "male songwriting is either about effervescently twee songwriting about a girl in fucking flowerly fields and how i'll never leave you forever or 'she done me wrong man, she's a BItch Whore'" and i feel like while this song leans more towards the latter in its aggressive nature, there's definitely room to be made for a third category that's just "SEX!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (Girl I Want To [REDACTED] You So Badly)". i dunno. i'm just not that into it. though at least dennis didn't record himself fucking someone in the studio on this one, which also happened
"deirdre" is breezy and a very sweet song. it's hard to go wrong with flutes and chimes to make a song feel like that :]! that sound in combination of a love again makes me feel as if i'm drifting through the clouds just as the sun begins to turn the sky a brilliant orange. bruce johnston really, really shines on this song-- schmaltzy, maybe, but he's damn good at schmaltzy stuff. see also "disney girls 1957" off of surf's up
i was looking at an old beach boys forum, on a thread about a decade old, trying to find out what was up with the beginning harmony (i was interested in the effect-- apparently it's a home recording spliced into the song, maybe some tape warble in there) and the forum OP says that it was his favorite off of the album and instead of answering the question he had (same as mine-- beginning harmony effects) two people respond in a passive-aggressive manner on how it's actually not that great and it's not the best on the album. saw some similar stuff about nick drake being too mopey or whatever on a crusty and ancient forum as well (like... it was on the mudcat cafe. look at the layout of that shit. what the fuck). hopefully someday people can move past stuff like that
i earlier mentioned my disdain for the unnervingly horny output of dennis, but "forever" is what i consider to be his pinnacle of songwriting and one of the beach boys' best songs as a whole. i recall listening to this on loop in high school, several years ago, during the 1 hour break period they provided us to get homework done; it was in this very large addition to the old cafeteria, where all the tables were large and circular and the floors had a weird tile pattern where it was white but marbled in a way that it always looked dirty. i always sat alone; everyone did. it gave me lots of time to read the fire emblem 4 manga, or read and reread harlan ellison's essay about mailing a dead possum (if i recall) to someone that wouldn't give him the rights to something (if i recall), browse tvtropes, and listen to stuff all the while i did that. listening to this song, i had the thought: "i want to record this song for someone!" to me, it is the purest form of an undying declaration of love in songwriting; all they want is for the other person to be happy and they would do anything to do that. the memory faded with time, buried under general cynicism, and is only really coming back now; i hope someday i'm able to make this silly dream of mine a reality :]
the beach boys are very very good at this sappy, syrup-drenched type of ballad especially around this time period. it's just a good a song. and overall i'm glad i gave sunflower a fair shake!
brief tangent. i generally try to find mono recordings of old jazz types and early 60s pop to listen to as that's most likely what it would have been recorded, mixed, produced, etc. as. panning didn't really become too common until the mid-60s... but even when it did it appeared in only a very rudimentary form to keep things simple-- for mono tracks you can pan them 100 degrees left or 100 degrees right. there's a formula that determines how loud the signal is depending on the panning-- if you have it at 50% left, the audio signal going to the left channel will be 2x louder than the signal going to the right channel. when panning was first being distributed it was only left, center, or right-- as a result a lot of mid-career stuff from the beatles (for example) suffers from this within stereo mixes. it also doesn't help that i'm listening in headphones, but it is what it is!
all that said-- for jazz, i either click with it, or i don't, and i find myself clicking with this a lot-- most of the tracks are instrumentals of ballad-y types which is pretty much all i could ask for when looking something like this... nothing too fast or loud (with the exception of "festival minor", which even then i don't hate). pairs well with the heavy pouring of rain observed from deep within your fireplace. i can't phrase this quite right, but compared to so many other albums like this, instead of merely existing without substance, it soothes you into a painting of an idyllic and completely empty city in the middle of the night. the perfect album cover for an album like this
i downloaded this album and listened to it as i fly away from st. louis, to montreal, and from there to vienna. i'm always going to associate it with that
there's even an interpretation of a piece from frédéric chopin who stands as my favorite classical figure from any period. hell yeah
linked here is this month's full playlist, with every new song that i discovered, for anyone who is interested in the full list!
